Slashdot Mirror

No. I'm talking about practical decision-making in a world where everyone has partial knowledge and some people are (intellectually) dishonest. What I'm saying is:

The people who are best able to determine if the science is good (other scientists) think the science is good. The scientific consensus is global, crossing political, economic, generational, racial, gender, etc. boundaries. This means there is less chance of a systemic bias.

Climate skepticism as a movement is selective, with (impossibly) high standards for climate science but low standards for other science (or the implications of its own ideas). It is driven by politically-motivated non-scientists who care more about the implications of climate change than they do about understanding climate. There is no reason to give climate skeptics the benefit of the doubt since there's nothing special about the belief that humans aren't causing climate change. (The real skeptical position is "we don't know", not "it isn't happening".) Furthermore, the alternate explanation includes an implausible conspiracy theory. Climate skeptics follow the pattern of denial, moving goalposts and repeating old arguments.

As a non-climate scientist (like most on Slashdot), I have to decide what to believe based mostly on the credibility of the people involved. I see no reason to doubt the global scientific community, which has a good track record for figuring things out. I see lots of reasons to doubt climate skeptics. Therefore, as a practical matter, I go with the scientists. Your standard is nice in theory, but in practice it would force me to also be skeptical about relativity, the Holocaust, the September 11th attacks, Obama's citizenship, evolution and the age of the earth, etc., which is a spectacular waste of my time. No matter how good the evidence, you can never convince everyone, especially when egos and fortunes are on the line.

That's retarded. The only reference to anything like this that I can find is this page [s8int.com] which makes the argument that a certain piece of aztec art bears a resemblance to a tyrannosaurus skull. So yeah... hardly pervasive and hardly convincing to anyone who doesn't already desperately want to believe.

So I guess this page and this page and this page and quite a bit more just don't exist now do they?

fuck, are you using big or something? Because Google presented a crap load on a simple search for artifacts depicting dinosaurs.

No we haven't. The young earth grand canyon meme is debunked nicely here. It also doesn't stand up to some basic critical thinking skills, like if flash flooding carved the grand canyon, how come it left relatively fragile islands of rock standing up in the middle of the canyon in places?

That doesn't debunk anything. It's out dated too. But hey, don't let that stop you. Anyways, check out this, and look for the canyons created by Mt St hellens eruption when dams burst as well as the one in south carolina that happened during/result of a flood. As for the rock islands, the massive flood theories do not damage their existence. They were present in the flood simulations (using actual water and sediment) in the original Nova program. BTW, Nova is not really a creation science organization, your probably not going to be able to discredit them because of a simple god connection.

In order to believe young earth creationism, or ANY kind of age for the earth that's not in the millions or billions of years, you essentially have to throw away a ton of accepted knowledge, like how radioactive isotopes work, how sedimentation happens, plate tectonics, and so on. This includes things that are not only accepted but practically acted upon.

No you don't. You would have to change the relevence of the knowledge, that all. But I'm not asking you to believe the world is not millions or billions of years old. I'm asking you to view the evidence for what it is, support for an interpretation and not a fact that can't be disproven.

Basically science and technology are like a giant pyramid with the coolest crap on top. You can't accept the stuff on top, like say the GPS in your car or a radioisotope powered pacemaker, without implicitly allowing for the fact that all or most of the stuff beneath it is true, like the age of the earth.

See, here is where you are wrong. Have you ever heard the expression "there is more then one way to skin a cat"? Just because something is known to work one way doesn't mean it is the only way or the true way. We make batteries in about 30 different types of processes. we have roughly 50 different types of internal combustion engines and engined that don't run on combustion at all. We can make hydrogen though approximately 15 or more different ways. What you have to understand just because something fits, doesn't mean it happened like that and at any time, evidence could come along to change the entire understanding of what happened. And when you deny that possibility, you have stop doing science and started a religion or something.

That's retarded. The only reference to anything like this that I can find is this page [s8int.com] which makes the argument that a certain piece of aztec art bears a resemblance to a tyrannosaurus skull. So yeah... hardly pervasive and hardly convincing to anyone who doesn't already desperately want to believe.

So I guess this page and this page and this page and quite a bit more just don't exist now do they?

fuck, are you using big or something? Because Google presented a crap load on a simple search for artifacts depicting dinosaurs.

No we haven't. The young earth grand canyon meme is debunked nicely here. It also doesn't stand up to some basic critical thinking skills, like if flash flooding carved the grand canyon, how come it left relatively fragile islands of rock standing up in the middle of the canyon in places?

That doesn't debunk anything. It's out dated too. But hey, don't let that stop you. Anyways, check out this, and look for the canyons created by Mt St hellens eruption when dams burst as well as the one in south carolina that happened during/result of a flood. As for the rock islands, the massive flood theories do not damage their existence. They were present in the flood simulations (using actual water and sediment) in the original Nova program. BTW, Nova is not really a creation science organization, your probably not going to be able to discredit them because of a simple god connection.

In order to believe young earth creationism, or ANY kind of age for the earth that's not in the millions or billions of years, you essentially have to throw away a ton of accepted knowledge, like how radioactive isotopes work, how sedimentation happens, plate tectonics, and so on. This includes things that are not only accepted but practically acted upon.

No you don't. You would have to change the relevence of the knowledge, that all. But I'm not asking you to believe the world is not millions or billions of years old. I'm asking you to view the evidence for what it is, support for an interpretation and not a fact that can't be disproven.

Basically science and technology are like a giant pyramid with the coolest crap on top. You can't accept the stuff on top, like say the GPS in your car or a radioisotope powered pacemaker, without implicitly allowing for the fact that all or most of the stuff beneath it is true, like the age of the earth.

See, here is where you are wrong. Have you ever heard the expression "there is more then one way to skin a cat"? Just because something is known to work one way doesn't mean it is the only way or the true way. We make batteries in about 30 different types of processes. we have roughly 50 different types of internal combustion engines and engined that don't run on combustion at all. We can make hydrogen though approximately 15 or more different ways. What you have to understand just because something fits, doesn't mean it happened like that and at any time, evidence could come along to change the entire understanding of what happened. And when you deny that possibility, you have stop doing science and started a religion or something.

Never did anybody other than retarded atheists with nothing else to do claim that christians or jews say the earth is 6000 years old.

There are plenty of Young Earth Creationist Christians who believe the earth was created in 4004 BCE, making the earth 6000 years old. By saying atheists all came up with it you're showing your ignorance.

As for political, yes, it has changed the face of politics for good.

Burning witches on the stake was good? The crusades were good? Queen Isabella of Castile forcibly making Jews and Muslims either convert or leave Spain was good? The persecution of Gnostic Christians by the church was good? If you mean religion brought us democracy and liberty, you're wrong there too. Democracy and liberty came out of the Age of Enlightenment which was preceded by the Age of Reason in Europe. Both were rebellions from church authority. Among the Founding Fathers of the USA, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamen Franklin were supporters of Enlightenment, which gave rise to Classical Liberalism, meaning liberty and small governemnt.

Where is compassion without christianity or judaism I ask you?

Compassion is partially what Buddhism is about. Specifically Buddhism is about eliminating suffering. The Four Noble Truths focuses on suffering. Islam too deals with compassion and suffering.

There are many instances in which dinosaurs are depicted in the artwork of early man. That dinosaurs and man existed at the same time is uncontestable. Their bones are found in the same layers, and their footprints side by side in the same mud. It's just the way it is.

http://www.creationists.org/dinos_artifacts_and_ar t.html

Damn, that's one funny site I found on Google relating to those verses. http://www.creationists.org/

Anybody who wants to cling to a young earth.

Continental drift, after all, presupposes a time line about four orders of magnitude greater than that of young earth "theory." Hence, if you believe continental drift, you have a very hard time simultaneously buying into young earth.

Better question: What the heck is a dinosaur? I can't find a mention of them anywhere in my Bible.

Better check again.

After 3 billion years?

Publish the evidence in Science or Nature with your evidence to support your theories

No, it's not debatable whether one can call creationism a theory because it's not. Let's start with the deifinition of a theory:

A well tested (as opposed to a hypothesis which is less well tested) explanation for observed events. A theory must allow one to make predictions which can be tested by experiment. When the results of those experiments are as predicted, it lends support to the theory as a good explanation. If the results are not as predicted, they may lead to the eventual modification of the theory, or even its replacement.

Since creationism/intelligent design relies on a supreme being to start the whole thing rolling, a being which can neither be proven nor disproven, the arguments for these concepts fall flat. Without being able to verify or deny any part of ones thoughts (I refuse to call them theories) you cannot have a theory. End of story.

One can argue until they're blue in the face about how their evidence shows they're thoughts are just as plausible as someone elses but unless/until they can offer proof of a supreme being their ideas are relegated to the same pile as Santa Claus and the Easter bunny.

Next thing you know people will want to believe that the Grand Canyon is only a few thousand years old and was made by the flood during Noahs time. Oh wait, that's already being done.

Well at least the fact that humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time is still a safe subject. Er, maybe not.

We all know that micro evolution occurs, quite often sometimes.... No debate there. However... as for macro evolution, thats a completely different story.

"...Evolutionists don't want the weaknesses of evolutionary theory to be known to the public. In fact the negative effects of engaging in a debate with a Creation Scientist is so bad that evolutionist, Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, Berkeley, California, says, "Avoid Debates. If your local campus Christian fellowship asks you to 'defend evolution,' please decline....you probably will get beaten"

Don't get me wrong, creationists' theory seem a little strange... but I still find the lack of evidence for macro evolution quite compelling.

Just my $0.02